Great British Walks: Erddig, Wales

This walk in Erddig is one of ten chosen by the National Trust to feature in
its annual autumn walking festival, the Great British Walk.

6:00AM BST 29 Aug 2013

Each of these ten walks reveals a secret. A love story between two of Erddig's family servants has been transformed into a walk taking in little visited parts of the estate and tracking the places that the couple explored during their snatches of free time.

Erddig was the home of the Yorke family for nearly 250 years, right up to the 1970s. The family made their fortune from buying land, marrying into money and trying to be self-sufficient, rather than from possessing an aristocratic background.

Perhaps this explains their square dealing with the lower orders, or the serving classes, generally looking them in the eye rather than down their noses. Whatever the reason, Erddig has a wonderful archive of servant material, right down to how much grooms, cooks and nursemaids earned. And for our purposes it means that the palpable soft spot the last two owners had for their old housekeeper-governess, Lucy Jones, is well documented.

Servants were not generally encouraged to mix: single sex living quarters and long working hours limited any prospects for fraternisation. But Lucy the nurse to the last two sons of the Yorke family, met her future husband during her daily care of the boys.

"The boys would ride ponies and Ernest the footman had to prepare and escort them," says Pat Roberts, a volunteer guide at Erddig who leads tours around this 'romantic way'. "Lucy would come along as the boy's nurse and the two got close and closer." Romance blossomed and after Ernest survived the war, they were married in 1919.

Mark Rowe is the official walker of the top 10 secret discovery walks for the National Trust

Top ten secret walks

The National Trust has unearthed 10 walks around Britain that reveal a secret.

On Friday October 11 and Saturday October 12, from 10am to 12pm, Telegraph Travel readers can join a King’s Cross Rises walk led by our Heritage columnist Sophie Campbell, a Blue Badge Tourist Guide. It includes one of the oldest church sites in London, hidden gardens, a royal canal and the current development north of King’s Cross Station, including the capital’s newest piazza. The two-hour walks (with plenty of stopping opportunities) cost £15 per person, with a maximum of 15 people per walk. Booking essential. For further details or to book, email tours@love-london.com or see love-london.com.